A reminder from the past

        by monotreme1000  March 29, 2020

There have been several scientific papers written with the sole purpose of "debunking" the hypothesis that SARS2 originated from a Chinese lab in Wuhan. 

When I have time, I will look into these papers more closely. A quick reading suggests that at least some of their arguments rest on the assumption that no attempt would be made to disguise the origins of the virus. There is also an interesting omission from the list of species that they compare.

But, for now, I thought I would remind people that an escapee from a Chinese lab likely caused the 1977 "Russian flu" epidemic. My source will be a known purveyor of far right-wing conspiracy theories: The New York Times.

From the New York Times, Nov 29, 1992

Just as the 1946 virus was the same H1N1 type that caused the 1918 epidemic, so also, it turns out, was the so-called Russian flu of 1977. When the virus from that year's outbreak was examined genetically, not only did it prove to be another H1N1 variety, but it also was genetically identical to a type of influenza virus that had last been seen in the early 1950's, more than 25 years before. "You can anticipate certain rates of change in each gene per year, even if the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase stay the same," Murphy says. "But this virus looked as if it was in a genetically frozen state."

Many virologists now believe that it was literally just that: an influenza virus from the 1950's, stored in a laboratory freezer at a research facility in China, that somehow got released into the environment in 1977.